Keeping the net on a leash

Page Tools

Liu Di, a 24-year-old Beijing translator, uses encryption
software whenever she sends emails, but not everyone is that
careful.

"People aren't aware of the risks that are involved when they
receive or send emails," she said. "But most emails are, in fact,
monitored."

Liu Di, whose online web identity 'Stainless Steel Mouse' is
famous throughout China's cyberspace, knows what she is talking
about.

In late 2002, she was detained and held in confinement for
nearly a year, apparently for posting articles on Chinese internet
sites that criticised the government for refusing to protect
freedoms of speech and the press.

The Chinese government's determination to keep the internet on a
tight leash has now again come into focus after Shi Tao, a
journalist, was sentenced to 10 years in jail.

Shi "revealed state secrets" using his email account to post a
government order barring local media from marking the 15th
anniversary of the brutal 1989 crackdown on democracy activists at
Beijing's Tiananmen Square.

The 37-year-old was sentenced in April, but only now has it
emerged, through Paris-based rights group Reporters Without
Borders, that the government's case against him was aided by
information provided by US internet company Yahoo!

"They could have refused to give it," said Eric Harwit, an
expert on China's internet at the University of Hawaii. "Certainly,
Yahoo! could have said, 'this is private information, we're not
going to release it'."

Yahoo chief Jerry Yang said at an internet meeting in the east
Chinese city of Hangzhou that his company did not know why China
needed the information, but added he was not happy with the
sentence for Shi Tao.

"We did not know what they wanted information for," Yang told
journalists. "We are not told what they look for. If they give us
the proper documentation in a court order we give them things that
satisfy local laws.

"I don't like the outcome of what happened with this thing. We
get a lot of these orders, but we have to comply with the law, and
that's what we need to do."

China has more than 100 million internet users, making it the
second-largest market in the world after the United States, and
many foreign companies are fighting for a piece of the pie.

Yahoo! showed its determination to secure a slice last month
when it announced a decision to buy 40 percent of Chinese website
Alibaba.com for $1 billion ($A1.3 billion).

"What seems to be happening is that Yahoo! really does want to
please the Chinese government in hopes that it will get favourable
treatment in the future," said Harwit.

"If it compromises the well-being of Chinese citizens, then they
are willing to give that up to get favourable treatment by the
government."

Other large corporations have been accused of putting business
ahead of integrity by succumbing to China's pressure and censoring
sensitive information on its Chinese search engines, websites and
blogs.

In June it emerged that users of Microsoft's new China-based
internet portal were blocked from using the words "democracy",
"freedom" and "human rights" in an apparent move by the US software
giant to appease Beijing.

According to Reporters Without Borders, Google has agreed to
withdraw from its Chinese news search engine "news media considered
'subversive' by Beijing".

Nicolas Becquelin, a Hong Kong-based research director for
rights group Human Rights in China, said Western governments might
have to introduce legislation to rein in internet companies'
activities abroad.

"If these internet companies are not able by themselves to adopt
minimal ethical standards in their dealings with authoritarian
governments, then it is the governments who should adopt a
legislative framework," he said.

This framework could spell out what internet or IT companies can
and cannot do when they operate in foreign countries, he said.

"They do it for exports of weapons and certain other kinds of
exports, and they do it for companies paying bribes to foreign
officials, and I don't see why they couldn't do it for censorship
or surveillance technologies," Becquelin said.

Even so, no legislation in the West will change the fact that
the Chinese government has come out on top in its struggle to
control the internet, armed with expensive technology and massive
security resources.

"The Chinese government has won. They basically censor the
internet," said Becquelin.

"The system relies both on hard and soft methods - the hard
methods being blocking websites and so on, and the soft methods
being to make examples of people in order to instill
self-censorship in internet users."

Page Tools

SPONSORED LINKS

Related

1126750069442-smh.com.auhttp://www.smh.com.au/news/technology/keeping-the-net-on-a-leash/2005/09/15/1126750069442.htmlsmh.com.auAFP2005-09-16Keeping the net on a leashPeter Harmsen<br />BeijingTechnology